Much Ado in Maggody Page 8

  “I think I’d remember,” Estelle said, equally bewildered. Both of them looked at Dahlia, but she was preoccupied with a molded gelatin salad (lemon Jell-O, pecan pieces, and coconut).

  A fourth figure found courage to come forward, although he almost tripped on a particularly sly bit of gravel. “Dahlia,” he yelled, “I want you to give up this tomfoolery. We aren’t married like these other folks, but we’ve been keeping company for a long time and I’d like to think you’re bespoken for.”

  “Why, Dahlia,” Estelle said, “I hadn’t heard that, but I’m thrilled to pieces for you. When are you two planning to get hitched?”

  Dahlia’s cheeks puffed out and her lower lip protruded. “You can think whatever you like, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon,” she yelled, “but I am not bespoken for and you got no call to say such a thing, especially in the middle of the road and in front of everybody.”

  “And I ain’t going home,” Eilene Buchanon said loudly.

  “Neither am I,” Millicent said. Other protesters echoed the phrase, and Johnna Mae snuck in another “old fart,” this time loudly enough to elicit a harrumph from the old fart himself.

  Ruby Bee got up and went to the edge of the road. She placed her fists on her hips and produced the expression that had cut short many a potential barroom brawl. “Now it’s your turn to listen and listen up good, Earl Buchanon, and the rest of you. I happen to be a widow, so I don’t have to take orders from some chauvinist anymore, or scurry around trying to get supper on the table exactly at five o’clock or stay up till midnight ironing overalls or get up at six every blasted morning to make biscuits from scratch. But I did it for right at twenty years, because I was brought up to think that was the way married life was, that it didn’t matter one hoot if I wanted to sleep late or go to a matinee at the picture show in Starley City. Well, no one should have to do those things unless she wants to, and none of us wants to anymore. Not Eilene or Millicent or Elsie or Dahlia, if and when she gets hitched, or any of us here in the parking lot.”

  She was working up to a Verberish pitch when a car came around the curve, braked momentarily, and stopped at the edge of the lot. Truda Oliver got out and came over to the table where I was still looming. “Johnna Mae, I have thought about how the bank treated you after you took that time off to have a baby, and I have decided that you deserve better from the institution you have been loyal to all these years.” She fluttered a hand at her husband, who was clinging to Bernswallow like a baby possum hanging on to its mama. “Sherman, I am going to stay here and support this protest until you agree to undo all the wrong things done to this woman. As for your supper, it’s high time you figured out how to work the can opener.”

  Carolyn rose to her feet and began to applaud in a slow, measured rhythm. One by one, her followers stood up and joined in until each clap seemed louder than a firecracker. Sherman Oliver stared uncomprehendingly at his wife, who had a hand on Johnna Mae’s shoulder and a smile that surpassed simple martyrdom by a long shot. The noise drove those on the yellow line back to the far side of the road, where they muttered to each other and shuffled their feet in the gravel.

  The noise also drove Oliver and Bernswallow back into the bank. The deputies merely drove away, and after a moment of thought I went back to the police car and did the same. I may have been grinning just a tad, but it didn’t matter because nobody could see me. Cherry lime ade time.

  Staci Ellen Quittle put down her paperback novel and picked up the telephone receiver. “Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office,” she said, utilizing her tongue to ease the wad of gum to the other side of her back molars, out of the way. After listening for a moment, she added, “No, I’m afraid she’s out of the office this week. She’s on a case in some place upstate named Maggody and doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Do you want me to take a message?”

  Sighing at the affirmative response, she found a pencil and a discarded envelope. It turned out not to be the kind of message that she took on a regular basis. Most of the words contained exactly four letters, luckily for her, since her spelling wasn’t all that good. Although Staci Ellen would never dare use those words herself, having been raised to have a healthy respect for the taste of soap, she was familiar with them because her boyfriend made her go watch him bowl every Thursday night, Thursday being league night, and the language got pretty rough after the boys downed a few beers. Once she’d tried to beg off with the excuse she had to wash her hair, but he’d come by the house and almost literally dragged her out to his car anyway. And that was the night his team rolled against the body shop on Pipkin Avenue, and all the girlfriends knew from experience that the body shop (not to mention their slutty girlfriends) used the worst language of anyone. Once Wanda said that in her opinion it was gutter talk, and Staci Ellen laughed so darn hard a tear ran down her leg and she had to wash out her panties in the ladies’ locker room and dry them under the machine that blew hot air.

  “I’ll be sure and tell Ms. McCoy-Grunders when she checks in,” Staci Ellen said, “and thank you for calling the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office.” She hung up and reached for her book. A thought intruded. If she couldn’t say out loud all those four-letter words, how was she supposed to relay the message from the potty-mouthed man in Las Vegas? She wondered if she could sweet-talk her boyfriend into hanging around the office until Ms. Hotshot With a Hyphen called, but decided it wouldn’t work because Bruno all the time kept harping on how he didn’t even like the idea of her working for a woman lesbian and that was why he never picked her up after work and she always had to take the bus and sometimes didn’t get home until after dark, which was on the unsettling side because of the neighborhood and all the high school dropouts in tight jeans who stared at her and used some of those four-letter words right out in public.

  She freed the gum and chewed it while she thought some more. A few ideas came to mind, including the straightforward approach of just wadding up the envelope and throwing it in the trash can. Or closing the office early, and if caught, saying she’d been overwhelmed by PMS—but that wouldn’t work because she’d used it last week and Ms. Hotshot With a Hyphen had sympathized, that being the politically correct posture at WAACO, but at the same time most likely had jotted the day and time in her notebook just so she’d know if Staci Ellen tried it again one teeny tiny minute too soon.

  At last Staci Ellen decided she could spell out each word over the phone. That way her vocal virtue wouldn’t be compromised and she could still avoid being accused for the ten thousandth time of losing a message, which she found both an exaggeration and an insult. She picked up the book and found the scene where the count with the slate gray eyes and the dueling scar on his cheek was holding the raven-haired, penniless governess (who was in truth a wealthy heiress but wouldn’t find out right until the next to last page) against her will and kissing her so hard it bruised her lips even though secretly she found herself strangely drawn to him and therefore unable to keep her breasts from heaving against his chest and herself from feeling a wave of heat in her loins that threatened to consume her.

  It was Staci Ellen’s favorite scene, especially after she’d looked up the word loins in the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office dictionary. But not when Ms. Hotshot With a Hyphen was there. Staci Ellen Quittle sure as heck wasn’t born yesterday, as she was fond of telling herself and sometimes Bruno, assuming he let her get in one little word when all he ever wanted to talk about was handicaps and seven-ten splits and changing the color of his team’s shirts or adding a picture of a skull and crossbones on the back.

  A flicker of irritation crossed her face, and she glanced over the top of the book at the calendar. Thursday. Darn, darn, and double darn.

  Once it was dark, I drove up the road to the bank to see if the protesters were burning dollar signs on the lawn or doing anything else worthy of my professional attention. There were at least a dozen pickup trucks parked on the Assembly Hall side of the ro
ad, and twice that many men leaning against the trucks, their arms folded and their expressions mean. I presumed they hoped to intimidate the protesters with their silent vigil, but it wasn’t having much effect on the occupants of the lot, who were drinking out of plastic cups and chattering to each other. A few lanterns had been placed in strategic corners, and a foursome was actually playing cards at one table. I couldn’t tell if they were playing canasta, bridge, poker, or go fish. In that Dahlia was one of them, I figured it was the least demanding of that list.

  Eilene was shooting quick looks across the road, however, and so were several others. Off to one side of the lot, Truda Oliver was fluttering her hands and talking intently to Johnna Mae. Ruby Bee, Estelle, and Elsie McMay were engaged in battle with a pile of army surplus cots, no doubt debating the wisdom of defying tradition (and the Baptist Women’s League recipe pamphlet, Blessed Be Thy Suppers) by the inclusion of water chestnuts. Carolyn McCoy-Grunders was bouncing around to supervise the activities.

  They were extremely well organized. It was obvious that Carolyn had led more than one protest in the past. I considered stopping to tuck everyone in and wish them all sweet dreams but increased my speed and headed for Farberville to see if a certain amiable state trooper might be willing to offer me a glass of wine in exchange for an incredibly clever recitation of Maggodian current events. Any port in a storm, although personally I prefer burgundy. Hee, hee.

  Brandon Bernswallow grimaced as he remembered his father’s scathing comments, all of which were totally unfair. It wasn’t as if Brandon could have done anything to save the bank from the unfavorable publicity—and there had been a shitload of it on the six o’clock news. A long scene of the protesters coming down the middle of the highway, for starters, and then the interviews with the feminist bitch (who, no matter how wonderful she thought she was, still had to squat to pee, by damn), the Nookim broad, himself, dopey Oliver, and even the idiotic windbag of a preacher from across the street. Which was where Brandon was in the process of parking his car. He’d driven into Maggody on the county road from Hasty and cut off his lights before coasting in behind the Assembly Hall. His presence at this hour needed to remain a secret, and a hefty percentage of the locals were on one side of the road or the other. There was a light on in the mobile home back there, but the curtains were closed and he didn’t see any shadows moving inside.

  The Emporium was dark. Brandon cut across the area behind it, alarming the rats chewing holes in the plastic garbage bags, and continued through the weeds until he was far enough away from the bank to risk a brisk dash across the road. He then repeated the manuever to come up behind the bank, where the damn fool women couldn’t see him enter through the back door. As if they’d stop gabbing and stuffing their faces long enough to notice anything, including a nuclear explosion, he thought as he flashed an unseen yet nevertheless obscene gesture at them.

  He unlocked the door and slipped inside, reminding himself not to lock it behind him; he was expecting company and it would be downright inhospitable and even insulting to his guest, who then might vanish. The back room was darker than the inside of a cow. He headed for his office, his hands out in front of him to avoid any injury to his admittedly attractive face. Had the sorority girls been hot to kiss his silky lips or what, he thought with a smirk. He had laid more dames than any of the guys at the frat house, and been ribbed about it day and night. College had been the best years of his life, what with the beer busts and girls’ busts and that crazy luau party when he’d gotten into the purple passion about noon and was drunker than a skunk by the time he picked up his date at the Delta Omega house (better known to his brothers as the doghouse, but that was an in-house joke). He must have had a gallon of Shanson’s wicked brew that afternoon. Not that that’d impaired his renowned prowess, of course. Why, he’d made Luci Hunnicut lie across the front seat and give him a blow job while he drove back to the house, only going up on the curb one time. Some party that’d been. Purple puke everywhere.

  “Stop or I’ll be obliged to shoot you,” croaked a voice from the darkness.

  Brandon stopped and he did it damn fast. His heart was thudding so loudly he could hear it, and a sour taste flooded his mouth. His fingers were frozen in the dark. He managed to get his raised foot down to the floor and to bring his arms to his sides. “Who’s there?” he managed. It came out in a gurgle, but it was the best he could do.

  “Don’t make me have to kill you. I have this big, enormous gun aimed right at you.”

  Brandon frantically tried to recall if there was anything in the back room he could use for a weapon. The metal wastebasket didn’t seem real lethal, nor did the dusty ledgers piled in a corner. “Stop or I’ll debit your account” wasn’t going to intimidate the prowler. He sucked in a breath and tried for a more authoritative tone. “I am the branch manager, buddy, and I have every right to be here. I also have a rifle and I’ve killed enough ducks and squirrels to feed your favorite African nation.”

  “Oh, yeah? Let’s see some identification.”

  “You can’t see anything, hairball. It’s pitch black in here, or haven’t you noticed?” Brandon said, feeling brave enough to risk taking the offense, it being, as Coach Grebes used to say in the locker room during half time, the best defense. The remark had always puzzled Brandon, but he’d loyally memorized it just the same.

  “I know as well as you do that it’s dark in here,” the voice retorted, clearly offended. “But how am I supposed to know if you’re really Mr. Bernswallow or if you’re a bank robber who’s pretending to be Mr. Bernswallow to trick me? What if I turn on a light and you shoot me with your rifle?”

  Brandon recognized the voice now, but perversely decided to see how far he could push the security guard, who had cotton for brains and not enough of that to make a tampon for a mouse. “Yeah, you’d feel pretty dumb if I shot you between the eyes, which is where I always shoot squirrels and rabbits and rats out at the town dump. Ka-boom!”

  “Uh, how about we both put down our weapons?”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me—but wait a minute. If I’m a bank robber lying about being this Bernswallow guy, how can you be sure I won’t lie when I say I put my rifle down?”

  There was a long silence while the security guard chewed on that one. “Well,” he said at last, “mebbe after you say you put your rifle down, you also say ‘Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye’?”

  “Yeah, that ought to do it.” Smirking so hard it almost hurt, Brandon quickly recited that which was requested of him, even kicking the metal wastebasket for sound effects. Then he said, “Turn on the light, Kevin, presuming you know how the switch works. Unlike yourself, I’ve got more important things to do than to stand around in the dark.”

  Kevin turned on the light with a hand trembling worse than a palsied widow woman. His eyes were round, and his mouth was dangling open. “Gee, Mr. Bernswallow, I didn’t know it was you or I wouldn’t have acted like I was a-goin’ to shoot you like you was a bank robber. I’m real sorry.”

  “You sure are.” Brandon brushed past him and went into the dark front room. Through a side window he glowered at the damn bitches out in the lot, then closed the blinds and ordered Kevin Buchanon to go away.

  “But I’m supposed to guard the bank, Mr. Bernswallow. You know that, don’t you? After all, when you hired me to clean the toilets and mop the floors, you said I was supposed to hang around the rest of the night in case some bank robber showed up and broke down the door to steal—”

  “Go away, damn it. I have an important piece of business to conduct, and I don’t want you slobbering over my shoulder when I do it.”

  “I wasn’t going to slobber over your shoulder, Mr. Bernswallow. I was going to sit on a folding metal chair by the back door the way I always do. It’s so hard on my buttocks that I can’t fall asleep, even if I wanted to.”

  “Just get your buttocks out of here,” Brandon said through clenched teeth. “You can come back in
an hour and sit on your damn folding chair until your buttocks atrophy, for all I care.”

  Kevin smiled, exposing uneven teeth and a hunk of spinach from supper (which had been consumed at the truck stop outside of Starley City, ’cause his pa sure as hell wasn’t going to fix it). “Speaking of trophies, I was admiring that big one you got in your office. You know the one, don’t you? It’s the gold cup what has handles on either side and that real nice plaque on it. How’d you win it, Mr. Bernswallow?”

  “It’s a loving cup from my fraternity brothers. That’s all I’m going to say about it. If you value your job, and perhaps your life, you will take your ass elsewhere for the next hour.”

  Brandon waited until Kevin stumbled to the back door, then went into his office and sat down behind his desk. The trophy Kevin admired was indeed a large one, worthy of anyone’s admiration. Brandon had told his parents it was for fraternity spirit, which was a hoot, since he’d been known to drink spirits from it. If his parents had learned the truth, they’d have dragged him to the damn doctor’s office to be tested for every known sexually transmitted disease in the western hemisphere.

  Snickering under his breath, Brandon took out the page he’d worked on earlier and lovingly studied his calculations. A lump sum, payable immediately, or a monthly payment, amortized at eleven and a half percent, adjustments to be made semiannually on the basis of the consumer price index.

  It was the funniest damn blackmail demand he’d ever seen, and Brandon was disappointed when his visitor, who arrived promptly, failed to see the irony of it. He was in the midst of saying as much when the trophy came down on the back of his head.

  Brother Verber was a mite disappointed himself, but only because the book he’d bought at a back-alley used book store in Farberville had no decent illustrations. Oh, it went on and on about rituals and incarnations of Satan and all your basic horrible devils and demons. There were diagrams of pentexes and hex symbols. There was a long, tedious chapter on the history of witchcraft in the medieval period, the only interesting part being the descriptions of witches burned at the stake or dunked in water until they admitted they was witches, at which time it was wienie roast time in the town square. Those ol’ boys played rough.